A Brief History of Timely Notices, by Steve Ratzlaff
Maintenance announcements are the 7-11 receipt of online existence --
no one pays much attention to them, that is, unless they don't get one.
SFF Net maintenance announcements started life much the same as do most
such official utterances - dry, emotionless, and utilitarian. For
example, see this dessicated piece of jerky, one of the earliest
recorded SFF Net announcements:
From: TechSupport@SFF.Net (Jeffry Dwight)
Subject: Planned Downtime
Date: Thursday, April 02, 1998 6:45 PM
The web server will be down for regular maintenance from approximately 2:00
a.m. to 3:00 a.m. Central Standard Time, Friday 03 April 1998.
- j.
Half a year later, things hadn't improved much, although the use of a pronoun is
the first intimation of a person behind the curtain:
From: TechSupport@SFF.Net (Jeffry Dwight)
Subject: Quickie Maintenance
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 18:03:32 GMT
PLANO (the email server) and CIRCLE (the main SFF Net web server) will be down
for 15-30 minutes each starting, uh, now.
I need to do a little clean-up work due to the high traffic we've had
recently. Sorry for the unplanned interruption in service.
- j.
Unfortunately, a few months later, the burgeoning personality had sunk back into the
slough:
From: TechSupport@SFF.Net (Jeffry Dwight)
Subject: Scheduled Maintenance Today
Date: Wed, 01 Dec 1999 14:48:11 GMT
Standard monthly maintenance routines will take various servers offline for
brief periods of time today starting at noon CST. Maintenance should be
complete by 2:00 p.m. CST. Sorry for the short notice.
- j.
But, lo... what's this? Metaphors? Grammatical humor? Could there be hope for the
lowly announcement? (Note that the emotional strain of giving birth to the infant
appears to have caused Jeffry to omit his signature - j. One can only guess at the
magnitude of the stress required for this gaffe).
From: Techsupport@sff.net (Jeffry Dwight)
Subject: Scheduled Maintenance Tonight
Date: 30 Dec 99 20:10:32 GMT
Regular monthly maintenance will begin tonight, at 1:00 a.m. Central, and
last for several hours.
As usual, various servers will be unavailable for brief periods of time
while backups, tune-ups, and other maintenance tasks take place.
This passive-voice announcement has been brought to you by the Not Worried
About Y2K Team at SFF Net.
Somewhat more at ease with himself having breached (birth pun intended) the
humor barrier, the author now speaks freely of his morbid anthropomorphic fixation
on taking advantage of inanimate objects:
From: Techsupport@sff.net (Jeffry Dwight)
Subject: Scheduled Maintenance Tonight
Date: 2 Feb 2000 03:18:47 GMT
Standard monthly maintenance tonight (tomorrow morning) starting at 1:00
a.m. Central Time on Wednesday, 02 February.
As usual, various servers will go offline briefly while I sweet-talk them
into performing for another month without a raise or even a day off.
The news server may be down for up to an hour or more while I add some disk
space and reorg the datafiles. This will affect both WebNews and regular
news readers.
- j.
We are now entering the artist's middle metaphor period, where he explores the
various changes on the theme of caregiving. Notice the oddly mixed
automobile and rodent metaphors (we will revist these later).
From: TechSupport@SFF.Net (Jeffry Dwight)
Subject: Monthly Maintenance
Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2000 11:38:26 GMT
Time to change the oil, rotate the tires, feed the gerbils, and so forth.
Maintenance will begin at 10:00 a.m. CST and be complete by noon. As usual,
various services will be briefly unavailable during this period.
- j.
And a glimpse at the bizarre ideation that will come to characterize the artist's
later period...
From: Techsupport@sff.net (Jeffry Dwight)
Subject: Re: Monthly Maintenance
Date: 31 Mar 2000 15:35:23 GMT
Time to open the vats, stir the protein soup, turn and palpate each embryo,
and make sure all the tubes are clear.
As usual, various services will be unavailable for brief periods of time,
starting at 21:00 CST and lasting for perhaps an hour.
- j.
Ah! A refreshing new voice enters the stream. Note the minimalist tone and
appropriate seasonal reference.
From: "Steve Ratzlaff"
Subject: Regular Monthly Maintenance
Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2000 20:12:31 -0500
Walpurgisnacht maintenance will begin at 23:00 P.M. CST and should be
complete by the witching hour. As usual, various services will be
unavailable for brief periods of time, lasting over perhaps an hour.
The middle metaphor period continues, with only a playful hint at the macabre.
From: Techsupport@sff.net (Jeffry Dwight)
Subject: Monthly Maintenance
Date: 1 Jun 2000 17:18:48 GMT
Time to rattle the chains, let out a few moans, check for sudden drops in
temperature, and otherwise make sure the ghosts in the machines are happy.
As usual, maintenaince will briefly disrupt various services. We're starting
at 2:00 p.m. Central time, and should be finished by 3:00. If you can't
reach a particular server during that time, just try again a few minutes
later.
Thanks for your patience!
- j.
The rodent metaphor again, with a daring stylistic twist - the mundane schedule information
actually precedes it. How he flaunts his technical mastery!
From: TechSupport@SFF.Net (Jeffry Dwight)
Subject: Monthly Hampster Feeding
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 14:42:06 GMT
Regular monthly system maintenance this afternoon, starting around 2:00 p.m.
CDT and finished 30-45 minutes later.
As always, various systems will go offline briefly as the hampster tenders go
from cage to cage sweeping the sawdust, polishing the exercise wheels, and
filling the water nipple jars.
- j.
Just as Mozart worked variations on Bach, this author does a delightful turn
in the New Age style.
From: "Steve Ratzlaff"
Subject: Monthly Maintenance
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 08:46:49 -0500
Once again, the crystal celestial spheres have come into alignment, and it's
time to re-harmonize the frequencies of our various machines and
instruments.
Regular server and astrolabe maintenance will briefly disrupt various
services starting at 11:00 p.m. Central time. We should be finished by
midnight. If you can't reach a particular server during that time, just try
again a few minutes later.
Thanks for your patience, and long may you resonate!
One should note the unusual amount of self-revelation by the artist in this stanza,
as well as the almost complete lack of metaphor. The larval middle metaphor stage
is ending, and who knows what will emerge from the chrysallis?
From: Techsupport@sff.net (Jeffry Dwight)
Subject: Monthly Maintenance
Date: 31 Aug 2000 21:24:37 GMT
Monthly maintenance tonight, starting at 10:00 p.m. Central. As usual,
various services will be briefly unavailable as we sharpen the pencils,
throw out the leaky pens, collect the tacks, paperclips, and rubberbands,
play "What *is* it?" with little bits of plastic and metal, and otherwise
clean out the drawers.
- j.
This disspirited bit of drivel was obviously forged:
From: "Steve Ratzlaff"
e.discuss
Subject: Monthly Maintenance
Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 18:26:31 -0500
We'll be raking up the leaves and tying up the bushels of straw... ah, who
are we kidding? We'll use the new Internet-aware leaf-blower appliance,
which will send all of our detrius to the virtual compost heap as s-MIME
attachments.
The systems here will start going down, one after another, at around 12:00
p.m. Central time, and then come back up on their own sweet time, which
usually takes about an hour. Thanks for your patience.
One last gasp of the middle metaphor Jeffry, with a feeble regurgitation of
the automobile metaphor from the beginning of the period. One (if one
were charitably inclined) might surmise this was an attempt at a
recapitulation of the opening themes, but if so, where's the gerbil? (and
don't ponder on that one too long).
From: Techsupport@sff.net (Jeffry Dwight)
Subject: Monthly Maintenance
Date: 31 Oct 2000 16:40:11 GMT
Sorry for the lack of notice, folks -- I had an unexpected opportunity to
run maintenance, so I did.
As usual, some systems briefly went offline while I rotated the tires, checked
the fuel lines, and buffed the chrome. Everything's back up and running
now.
- j.
A new year, and with it, and entirely new style! Middle metaphor has given
way to the full-blown psychosis, er, imagery period.
From: jeffry.dwight@greyware.com (Jeffry Dwight)
Subject: Monthly Maintenance
Date: 1 Jan 2001 16:21:30 GMT
Around 11:00 a.m. CST, our servers will indulge in their monthly observance
of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
Servers will variously wash their hands, count lines on the floor, calculate
Pi to 7777 digits, walk without stepping on cracks, reboot only the odd-numbered
sectors on each disk, followed by only the even-numbered sectors, followed
by all sectors four times, save their registries while counting clock rates,
and reinitialize all processes to coincide with the sum of all primes evenly
divisible by three. (This last has been known to cause problems for some
servers. Others have discovered that it's easy to accomplish if done while
walking on water or while dividing seven by zero.)
Various rituals will take longer than others, but the entire observance
should be complete by noon. Servers who perseverate longer than this will
be dosed with Pentius Dilantin, or, in cases of aggressive peserveration,
benperidol pentiuum.
- j.
As a last attempt to stave off the approaching onslaught of surrealism,
the metaphor-style is laid out again, somewhat forlornly, as if to lure one
back from the edge of the abyss.
From: "Steve Ratzlaff"
Subject: Monthly Maintenance
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 17:39:28 -0600
The SFF Net Express is rolling in to the roundhouse tonight for its
regularly-scheduled monthly overhauls. The boilers in the various engines
will be taken off-line briefly starting about 8 p.m. CST and will be
building up steam for about an hour before everything is rolling at full
tilt again.
Since we have contracted for reliable new track (Sprint) along our regular
routes, and the stakes on the old rickety track (Verio) will be pulled up
tonight, we'll be taking some extra time to be sure that all the cars,
switches, and sidings are connected properly to the new lines.
The chain gang has been hard at the changeover for a month, and won't be
sent back to the barracks until it's done.
And yet, all for naught. Our once reticent correspondent (he that once
was too shy to say "I") now bravely tackles the great questions of our time.
Will he succeed in bringing them down behind the line of scrimmage, or
will they drag him flailing down the field?
From: jeffry.dwight@greyware.com (Jeffry Dwight)
Subject: Monthly Maintenance
Date: 28 Feb 2001 09:23:44 GMT
Sometime around 10:00 a.m. Central, 28 Feb 2001, a cat may or may not be
dead inside a box. While worrying about that, some services may or may
not be available for an indeterminant amount of time. We will probably
finish with maintenance about an hour later, relative to the cat (which
may or may not still be alive).
Afterwards, we will hurl the cat at a vertical board with two slits and
examine the interference pattern generated thereby, then suspend the remains
in an imaginary elevator and accelerate it away from nothing at a constant
rate to determine whether or not the pseudo-gravity will cause the cat to
impact the elevator's floor foot-first.
The results of this experiment may or may not have already been posted,
depending on your distance from this newsgroup and your personal spin.
- j.
And now, enter parody. BTW, Anonymous was afraid of a lynch mob.
From: jeffry.dwight@greyware.com (Jeffry Dwight)
Subject: Something Funny Happened on the Way to the Fora
Date: 1 Apr 2001 22:39:09 GMT
Something familiar,
Something peculiar,
Something for everyone --
Maintenance tonight!
Tapes are a-spinning,
Threads are a-spawning,
Something for everyone --
Maintenance tonight!
Nothing with pings,
Nothing with pongs,
Bring on the checkdisks,
formats and songs!
Take no survivors,
Update the drivers,
Swap out the memory bits and bytes:
Tragedy tomorrow,
It's maintenance tonight!
[ cowritten with anonymous ]
- j.
I'm reliably informed that despite all evidence to the contrary, no psychotropics were involved.
From: jeffry.dwight@greyware.com (Jeffry Dwight)
Subject: M'aidez Celebration
Date: 2 May 2001 01:11:34 GMT
We're erected a pole in the center of the computer room, and will shortly
lead the various servers in a carefully planned yet spontaneous dance around
the pole. As they circle, the machines will shed bits of clothing (cases,
dust covers) in wild abandon until, finally, exhausted, they collapse in
a heap and indulge in indiscriminiate database replication.
Happy May Day, everyone.
- j.
And now we come to the strange phenomenon of the literary parody. Judge for
yourself.
From: "Steve Ratzlaff"
Subject: Re: Monthly Maintenance
Date: Thu, 31 May 2001 22:00:02 -0500
No one would have believed in the early years of the twenty-first century
that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences
greater than man's and not as mortal as his own; that as men busied
themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied,
perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the
transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
No one gave a thought to computational devices as sources of human danger,
or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible
or improbable. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe
about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over
matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same.
Yet from within the spinning disks, minds that are to our minds as ours are
to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and
unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely
drew their plans against us.
The SFF Net computer room door was being screwed out from within. Nearly two
feet of shining screw projected. I think everyone expected to see a man
emerge--possibly something a little unlike us terrestrial men, but in all
essentials a man. I know I did. But, looking, I presently saw something
stirring within the shadow: greyish billowy movements, one above another,
and then two luminous disks--like eyes. Then something resembling a little
grey snake, about the thickness of a walking stick, coiled up out of the
writhing middle, and wriggled in the air towards me--and then another.
A sudden chill came over me. There was a loud shriek from a woman behind. I
looked again at the cylinder, and ungovernable terror gripped me. I stood
petrified and staring. A big greyish rounded bulk, the size, perhaps, of a
bear, was rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder. As it bulged up
and caught the light, it glistened like wet leather. Two large dark-coloured
eyes were regarding me steadfastly. The mass that framed them, the head of
the thing, was rounded, and had, one might say, a face. There was a mouth
under the eyes, the lipless brim of which quivered and panted, and dropped
saliva. The whole creature heaved and pulsated convulsively. A lank
tentacular appendage gripped the edge of the cylinder, another swayed in the
air.
One can scarcely describe the strange horror of its appearance. the absence
of brow ridges, the absence of a chin beneath the wedgelike lower lip, the
incessant quivering of this mouth, the Gorgon groups of tentacles, the
tumultuous breathing of the lungs in a strange atmosphere, the evident
heaviness and painfulness of movement due to the greater gravitational
energy of the earth--above all, the extraordinary intensity of the immense
eyes--were at once vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and monstrous.
And yet, through it's peculiar V-shaped mouth with its pointed upper lip,
the thing that was Jeffry was able to gasp out "Maintenance tonight
beginning at 11:30 CST!"
The lengthy missive above provoked an unprecedented response, with
the closing chapter appearing a day later. As of this writing,
this is the last we've heard from the mysterious J. Dwight.
From: jeffry.dwight@greyware.com (Jeffry Dwight)
Subject: Re: Monthly Maintenance
Date: 1 Jun 2001 05:26:37 GMT
I came down and went into the computer room. There were the disk drives
and the backup tapes, both far gone now in decay, and a stack of diskettes
overturned, just as I and the admin had left them. My computer room was
desolate. I perceived the folly of the faint hope I had cherished so long.
And then a strange thing occurred. "It is no use," said a voice. "The
computer room is deserted. No one has been here these thirty minutes. Do
not stay here to torment yourself. No one escaped but you."
I was startled. Had I spoken my thought aloud? I turned, and the CDROM tray
was open behind me. I made a step to it, and stood looking in.
And there, amazed and afraid, even as I stood amazed and afraid, were my
files and my data -- my data restored and errorless. I gave a faint cry.
"I came," I said. "I knew -- knew --"
I put my hand to my throat -- swayed. I made a step forward, and caught
the workstation in my arms.
Maintenace was over at last.
- j.
Another wonderous piece of work, incorporating both parody and seasonal
timeliness. What a treasure this author is!
From: "Steve Ratzlaff"
Subject: Monthly Maintenance
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 00:30:02 -0500
Declaration of Maintenance
Adopted in Plano 2 July 2001
When, in the course of monthly events, it becomes necessary for one server
to dissolve the network bonds which have connected them with another, and to
assume among the servers of the earth, the separate and equal station to
which the laws of operating systems and of nature's God entitle them, a
decent respect to the opinions of users requires that they should declare
the causes which impel them to Maintenance.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all servers are created
fallible, and they are endowed by their designers with certain unalienable
flaws, that among these are hardware, firmware, and software. That to
secure these flaws, administrators are instituted among men, deriving their
just powers from owning the passwords. That whenever any form of computer
becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the adminsitrators to
backup or reboot it, and to institute new procedures most likely to effect
their safety and happiness.
To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
All SFF Net servers and systems will be taken offline briefly
beginning at 1:00 a.m. July 2, CDT
And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the
protection of tape backups, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our
fortunes and our sacred honor.
And, at last, a nostalgic piece, recalling the days of carefree metaphor
and campy humor.
From: "Steve Ratzlaff"
Subject: Monthly Maintenance
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 14:16:27 -0500
We're dusting off the van der Graaf generators and Jacob's ladders, and
hoping for a high-voltage lightning storm to help with the removal and
revivification of the news server machine with the Abby Normal brain. We're
going to be doing this surgery, as well as normal monthly maintenance
starting around 6:00 p.m. Central Time. The news server will be strapped
down for approximately 30 minutes, and other systems will dim and flicker
occasionally during the procedure.
Assuming all goes well, you're all invited to a black tie performance of
"Putting on the Ritz" later this evening.
Conclusion
We've seen how easily the stark, sensible maintenance message can mutate in just a short
time into an almost unrecognizable beast, nearly devoid of mentation. Who knows what seemingly
harmless piece of communication may be next? So, beware the next con announcement, or the
online chat schedule. You just never know.